Watching Paul Evokes Memories

   Watching Paul McCartney with his vibrant band playing at the White House
Giving our leaders some sorely needed soul-inspired entertainment
   I am carried back to more carefree times, when strangers danced, embraced, and sang together across this Land, celebrating without being called terrorists.  In Southern Oregon, Dave Marston led the gang who loved Beattles' songs, and now he has died an untimely death, not making it to 64. 
    May these inspired folk songs of the sixties never be silenced, for they sang of love, of justice and its costs, of betrayal, of yesterday and the simple needs for friendship.  They were songs of praise, of prayer, of letting it be.  Now almost fifty years later, we are still protesting, yearning for peace that lasts, and listening for answers to the questions raised so boldly by the troubadours of the nineteen-
sixties.  Let their lights shine on in you and me!
      Carol Browning  7/28/10

Fierce Grace

  Ram Das speaks of his stroke as turning his world upside-down, opening him to the fierce grace required to persevere, adapt, let go of all the ego's plan for a predictable future.
  Our Spirit gives us redirection that may give birth to courage, a tenacity, a deep compassion we'd never have learned to nurture had our path been easy and our health reliable. We touch others with our own choices when the going gets tough, and familiar ways of serving and learning no longer work.
  We can feel self-pity for our change of fortune, or we can accept we cannot go back or reverse all the changes, but our lives are still precious and worthy of all the love and grace we can muster.
(c) Carol Browning 3/17/10